DRAMA

CHESS

The collaborators on Chess are giants of rock music and rock musicals, and here they have created a complex rock opera that played to full Broadway houses and standing ovations. In this musical, the ancient game becomes a metaphor for romantic rivalries, competitive gamesmanship, super-power politics, and international intrigue.

The pawns in this drama form a love triangle: the loutish American chess star, the earnest Russian champion, and a Hungarian American female assistant who arrives at the international chess match in Bangkok with the American, but falls for the Russian. From Bangkok to Budapest, the players, lovers, politicians and spies manipulate and are manipulated to the pulse of a monumental rock score that includes “One Night in Bangkok” and “Heaven Help My Heart.”

Written by Neil Simon

Directed by Marianne Phinney

Brothers Eugene and Stanley are living with their parents in 1949 New York and trying to break into comedy writing for radio. Their mother Kate takes care of her father, Ben, a passionate socialist, while putting up with the indiscretions of her husband Jack. Eugene and Stanley finally get a break with a comedy sketch based on the family. The sketch outrages Jack, who sees the thinly disguised characters as an attack on him. The last chapter in Neil Simon’s Eugene trilogy, Broadway Bound shows a family overcoming emotional conflicts with Simon’s trademark humor and wit. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Written by Neil Simon

Directed by Marianne Phinney

Brothers Eugene and Stanley are living with their parents in 1949 New York and trying to break into comedy writing for radio. Their mother Kate takes care of her father, Ben, a passionate socialist, while putting up with the indiscretions of her husband Jack. Eugene and Stanley finally get a break with a comedy sketch based on the family. The sketch outrages Jack, who sees the thinly disguised characters as an attack on him. The last chapter in Neil Simon’s Eugene trilogy, Broadway Bound shows a family overcoming emotional conflicts with Simon’s trademark humor and wit. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.